DOVER, Illinois — The village of Dover, Illinois, has fewer than 150 people, but three local electrical workers hit the road Friday to help another small town across the country.
As of Tuesday night, more than 144,000 are without power from North Carolina to Florida as communities recover from Hurricane Helene's flooding. Daniel Elmore and Sky Abrassart, managers at Elmore Electric, and their friend Nolan Drake, wanted to help that recovery effort.
Daniel asked his wife Beth Elmore to make a post on Facebook sharing their plans to volunteer in North Carolina. They expected a handful of donations to bring with them.
"Before we knew it, there was stuff all over the lobby, we had to put it in this shop over here, then it started spilling into the sidewalk here," Beth said.
People from across the Illinois Valley — as far as Aurora and Peoria — stuffed the company's trailer to the brim, and then some. They brought essentials like food, toiletries and medical supplies.
"I’d say we didn’t have five minutes in between donations, it was nuts," Beth said.
Once they got to North Carolina through volunteer network Baptist on a Mission, the three were sent to Spruce Pine, a mountain town of 2,000.
"East of Asheville got very heavily impacted, over by Spruce Pine, which is northeast of Asheville," Abrassart said. "It is very devastated here, a lot of the stores have, you know, 15 feet of water in them. Some, like oil plants and other things are completely washed away."
They've spent days patching roofs, removing trees and fixing power lines.
"A lot of those people lost everything, so they're just happy to get some help," Drake said.
All while getting through winding, muddy roads.
"The hardest part about doing a lot of the relief work, is a lot of these towns and homes are in very remote parts of the mountains," Drake said. "You have to have like ATVs or helicopters to reach some of these places."
They said the work is just as meaningful to them as the people they help.
"I don’t normally cry, but it makes me want to cry 'bout every time we go to help these people," Daniel said.
Their journey was made even more impactful by the community's support.
"The community is the one who really made this what it is," Beth said. "They were going to bring three guys down, but the community gave them an entire trailer, and then some, of donations."
The community brought so many donations, they couldn't fit it all in one trailer. The owner took the remaining supplies in the bed of his truck on Monday.
Daniel, Abrassart and Drake will head back to Illinois on Wednesday.
If you still want to donate to the victims of Helene, Midwest Technical Institute is collecting items from Oct. 9 to Oct. 15. You can find drop-off locations and requested items here.